Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, did not return from bike ride, Chaffee County, 10 May 2020 #34

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I’m kind of looking at it as three time blocks that we want to dissect:

12:30pm (SM’s convo with best friend stops) - 11:30pm (Salida job site noise)

I like the way you think @EggSalad! I would add: 12:30 convo ends, then ??o'clock JP spoke with Barry in town. (JP says it was Saturday afternoon, but we don't know the precise time.) Next is the 11:30 PM bobcat thing, as you say.
 
If a body is found wouldn't the ME be able to detect that she didn't drown on her own?
<rsbm>

They may be able to determine drowning or not through diatom testing.

When a person drowns, diatoms get into the blood stream through inspiration. Not sure if the lack of diatoms would lead them to anything conclusive, other than she did not drown.

Here's a wiki for diatoms101
 
That attitude change is what makes me feel they missed finding her at the job site. Pacing and looking out the window suddenly stopped too. Remember they have no evidence against him he said......he thinks.

I think he may have been pacing and looking out the window at LE vehicles headed to search the fire camp. But I think that area is fixing to be searched again. Moo
 
yes AND a full moon can mess with unstable minds.
I was once told by an ER Doc that he always scheduled his days off when there was a full moon. He claimed there was some truth to it bringing on the crazies.
Supposedly that notion has been debunked but my dad was LE and he swore that full moons brought out the crazies. I believe it.
 
Hello. I have been following this case From the start and have been reading all your threads. This is my first post and I hope I’m
Doing this right.

What I can’t understand is why it appears that most people here feel that the 12:30pm Saturday “abrupt ending” to her texting conversation with her friend must indicate her approximate of death. More importantly, why we are basing the entire Barry timeline around this little bit for information? People are questioning how he could have gone home at 11:00am, then be seen in town, etc. I think an easy explanation to why this could occur is that she wasn’t killed then and was killed later in the evening.

IMO there can be many reasons for her not texting her friend back that may or may not have anything to do with Barry. Maybe they were arguing and she was upset and forgot about the text convo, maybe she went for a hike, etc.

While I do believe Suzanne was killed on Saturday, I don’t see why it couldn’t have happened in the evening.
Thanks for reading my first post!
 
In my line of work I use luminol, but I also use my black light. The bodily waste of humans and animals contains organisms that glow under black lights. So, it is effective for me when looking for pet urine and etc.

But, you be astonished at what I have found. There have been insufficient things as well at things I've had to turn over to LE.

Keep in mind, the human body when shocked by a situation at times will urinate. The mouth will also dribble with saliva. All of which I can pick up even after it has been cleaned.
Since you are familiar with Luminol, would it have detected human fluids on metal after an attempted clean up? I am just very curious. I find it fascinating you work with Luminol. MOO
 
RSBM

No, it has never been established where BM was that night or who it was at the river front job site.
Well, Barry did admit that he worked on the Bobcat at an unknown time and that he forgot to mention it to the investigators. Of course, we don't know if the bobcat was at this particular location, but it could have been. JMO
 
Hello. I have been following this case From the start and have been reading all your threads. This is my first post and I hope I’m
Doing this right.

What I can’t understand is why it appears that most people here feel that the 12:30pm Saturday “abrupt ending” to her texting conversation with her friend must indicate her approximate of death. More importantly, why we are basing the entire Barry timeline around this little bit for information? People are questioning how he could have gone home at 11:00am, then be seen in town, etc. I think an easy explanation to why this could occur is that she wasn’t killed then and was killed later in the evening.

IMO there can be many reasons for her not texting her friend back that may or may not have anything to do with Barry. Maybe they were arguing and she was upset and forgot about the text convo, maybe she went for a hike, etc.

While I do believe Suzanne was killed on Saturday, I don’t see why it couldn’t have happened in the evening.
Thanks for reading my first post!
Welcome to Websleuths. Great post. You're right. We can't be certain about the time, but many of us speculate that that abrupt ending of her conversation points to something major happening at that point and Suzanne never got back in touch with her friend afterwards. I think she was murdered then, but I may be wrong. Moo
 
Selfie w MG and JP?
...After LS uploaded this story on her FB page someone asked her if that was JP in the backseat in that selfie of MG.
LS replied yes that is JP on Monday waiting for the brick to arrive.
This next part is pure speculation on my part :
I’m wondering if that selfie pic accompanied a text to BM saying we’re tired of waiting, JP wants to go home? Maybe BM replied with a text? ...
@Cindizzi bbm sbm Good question. Sorry if this has already been discussed and the question answered.
If this selfie is the one I recall, MG is in front pass. seat; JP is in back seat on driver side, soooo ----
1. When taken? Sometime during the MoDay week end, or that Mon or Tues? OR another irrelevant time?
2. Who, if anyone, was in driver seat? I see neon-ish green item, a couple inches big, at driver. seat shoulder. Was that the seat itself or driver's shirt or jacket?
3. Whose vehicle? If MG or JP, why were they both seated as passengers, instead of one in driver seat? If belonged to BM, pic was not taken on MoDay wk. end, or Mon. or Tues, because BM was not there w them, right?
TiA
ETA: I posted similar Qs. yesterday but have not seen responses.
 
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It could have been, at least in the first couple of weeks. They would have had to specifically test for it. (Surely they did, right?)

Unfortunately, it's possible that the Bobcat didn't come under scrutiny until that neighbor reported the noise. LE wouldn't have known it had been at that site right away, and while they may have luminol'ed it they may not have swabbed it for chemical analysis. Luminol should have turned up some evidence of blood if they did it in the first week, I'd think. All bets off if someone got a chance to swap out parts of the Bobcat though.

It's too late now, IMO. If the item were clothing, blood might still be detected, but thoroughly washed metal? I'm not so sure. It would certainly be worth a shot, I'd think. (Maybe LE knows exactly what the bleach was used for - seems likely).

The mere fact that he cleaned the Bobcat with bleach (if he did), should be in evidence if they luminol'ed it right away.

It would be really funny if there was a smell of bleach around the bobcat,
 
<rsbm>

They may be able to determine drowning or not through diatom testing.

When a person drowns, diatoms get into the blood stream through inspiration. Not sure if the lack of diatoms would lead them to anything conclusive, other than she did not drown.

Here's a wiki for diatoms101

From that wiki: " Samples are taken from bone marrow, lung, spleen, liver, kidney, brain tissue."

There won't be any of those left at 4 months out, sadly. Typically, they look in the actual organs but they can also take samples of those organs. Unfortunately, neither is likely to be possible in Suzanne's case, especially if her body was in water (if she was buried 6 feet under, then I'd hope that more testing could be done - but I wouldn't expect that to be a freshwater stream or lake drowning in the first place).

Diatoms and drowning

Interestingly, no diatoms would be present if the drowning were done at home. I can't remember who first suggested that idea, but it has been on my short list of possibilities ever sense. So, if Suzanne was drowned and then placed in a body of water to make it look like she drowned there, the diatoms (if present) would surely out the murderer. However, by now, it's also likely there isn't enough to test - so with each passing day, that same murderer could feel a little more confident about COD being an enigma.

Absence of diatoms in a skeleton would not provide evidence of non-drowning. I believe that at this point, searchers are looking for mostly skeletal remains. Blood and internal organs are almost certainly gone (although again, if buried deeply, maybe not - but I think that's unlikely given the soils in the area and the rather obvious excavation that would take).

Since the diatoms have to be shown to have been inside the person's circulatory system, even if a very careful dig into a grave turned up a body (and all relevant soil was preserved and studied), it would be hard to show whether the person drowned - or had merely been swimming in the diatom-infused water.

It sure would make for an interesting case. There are techniques used by some paleoarchaeologists who study paleobotany that would be convincing (a lung-shaped pattern of diatoms at the grave site) but to recover that data would in fact require a really really careful excavation, with various microscopes and test techniques in play before anything was moved. I'm not sure that has ever been done - or that even the FBI would think to use such a person. I only know of 2-3 people who do this. On a side note: those people were able to find microscopic botanical evidence of a fishing net from about 20,000 years ago - it decayed on the floor of a dwelling, was totally invisible, but these intrepid archaeologists (and I have to state that they were women) decided to look specifically for a net-shaped pattern of decayed plant material - and they found it.

That's because they had other evidence (previously overlooked by many archaeologists) of the existence of nets, which they believed were made by women. Eventually they found evidence that women were sometimes buried with their nets. Key point is that they found a net-shaped pattern of diatoms...so finding a lung-shaped pattern is possible, it's just tricky work and I'm not sure CCSO, even with the FBI, will get that done.

I do believe the body would have to be buried for any of this to occur, if stowed away in water or in a container that allowed water inside, I just don't think there will be a chance of recovering the evidence at this point.

Sorry for the long post, but it's such an interesting topic!
 
Thank you!
So, BM did something mechanical to the bobcat. He did not answer honestly about the timing. So I'm guessing the bobcat was used for the burial. If the noise heard at the Salida work site was the bobcat; If he was charging it, changing to attachments, at 1130 ish Saturday night, I think she was buried after that.

I've always thought that was done in the dead of night. He would feel safer then.

So I wonder, did he then park it at the home? Not take it back to the Salida job site? Was he done with that job? Or would he have needed it really good excuse for taking it away at 1130ish again at the job site? If so, he'd better have a Saturday night. Especially if he didn't haul it to Broomfield.
Moo
you're getting very close here.....great post!!
It seems to me that LE really focused on that
bobcat timing discrepancy so much so that it was fresh on BM's mind.
Why else did the excuse roll right off his tongue- that he was confused- missing wife- flustered, etc.
Because he'd already spouted that same excuse to LE when they hammered him about the timing discrepancy. Caught.
I'll bet this is just one of many little details that
LE caught him in that showed he was fabricating his story.
You can't fool professional interviewers. They
always seem to know the answers BEFORE they even ask the questions.
 
Welcome to Websleuths. Great post. You're right. We can't be certain about the time, but many of us speculate that that abrupt ending of her conversation points to something major happening at that point and Suzanne never got back in touch with her friend afterwards. I think she was murdered then, but I may be wrong. Moo
Agree.. Great first post @Louise39 and welcome. It is helpful to have some sort of timeline to rule in or out other pieces of information that may come along . If someone (shop owner for example) else places Barry in town, say at 3 pm and someone else at 4....pretty safe way to figure out the rest of his day.

As far as we know the conversation was pretty intense, concerning an upcoming wedding, with a dear friend. She could have sent a picture of a dress, a hair design, a flower centerpiece whatever and asked for an opinion. For conversation like that to end abruptly with no follow up , doesn't make sense. It also is believed this person intensely followed up trying to reach Suzanne, to no avail.
 
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